Sand Worth Half An Hour

Written by S K Deeraj

Illustration by Vani Tyagi

I’m at my grandmother’s house, a relic in itself. The kind of house where you can hear an old wall clock in every room, no matter where you are. From the kitchen, the hiss of batter meeting the pan cuts through the ticking of the clock, carrying the aroma of her famous dosa crisping to perfection. I stare at the sand timer on the dining table. It’s one of those fancy hourglass kinds, except this one is a half-an-hourglass. I flip it over, watching the grains of sand slide through the narrow passage like a tiny waterfall, spilling into the bottom chamber.

I don’t understand why it feels so heavy in my hands. It’s only a timer.

“Don’t flip it so much,” my grandmother calls from the kitchen. “It’s supposed to measure time, not waste it.”

Her words land like a question in the air, one I don’t know how to answer. What’s wrong with turning the sand over again? What’s wrong with watching it fall, one grain at a time, like moments that never return? But she says nothing more, and I don’t ask.

The irony of measuring something that’s always slipping away doesn’t hit me until years later. At that moment, I was just a restless kid, trying to see if I could make all the grains fall faster by shaking the timer.

My grandmother has always had this obsession with time. Lunch is at 1 PM sharp, hot filter coffee at 4 PM, dinner by 8 PM. Not a minute earlier, not a minute later. The clock dictates everything here. It’s like an invisible school bell ringing through the day. While the house runs like a well-oiled machine, there’s an odd charm to it. Time doesn’t feel like a burden here—it’s a rhythm.

Years pass. I sit at a desk now, eyes glued to my phone. The same clock ticks in the background, but the rhythm has changed. It says 11:56 AM, and I know the seconds are marching toward my noon meeting, but I am elsewhere. I scroll. Gmail. Instagram. A meme about procrastination. The seconds keep slipping, unnoticed.

Time isn’t a soft harmony anymore. It’s an anchor, dragging me beneath waves of deadlines and notifications. Time has become a race. Each second, a step ahead of me, and I’m always just behind—never catching up, never truly in it. I don’t remember the last time I let time unfold slowly, the way I used to. The timer at my grandmother’s house feels distant now—like a fable, something I once held and turned over but no longer understand.

I’ve stopped visiting Grandma, the excuses piling up in my mind: work, errands, life. Days become weeks. Weeks become months.

One evening, she calls me. It’s a simple question: “Why haven’t you been here since so long?” I fumble for an excuse, staring at my calendar filled with color-coded blocks that scream busy.

“Soon, Grandma. Maybe next week.”

Her silence speaks volumes.

“Come for lunch. I’ll make dosas,” she says before hanging up.

After shuffling around my calendar like a Rubik's Cube, I go. The smell of freshly ground chutney hits me first—coconut, fresh coriander, the smoke of incense curling in the kitchen. Everything feels suspended in a moment I can’t name. But something’s missing.

The spot on the table where the timer once sat is empty now, its absence more noticeable than the grains of sand that once trickled through it.

“Where’s the timer?”

“It broke,” she says, her smile lingering as she folds her hands. “But time tells itself, doesn’t it?”

There’s a pause, and I breathe in deeply. The silence isn’t empty—it hums with echoes I can’t name. My eyes keep drifting back to the empty spot where the timer once stood. A question lingers, but I don’t ask it.

We sit down to eat, and the conversation flows easily, like it always does, filled with laughter and memories. We talk about the weather, the garden, old neighbors—the small things that fill the spaces between the bigger moments. I catch myself watching her as she talks, noticing the way she holds her hands, the slight tilt of her head when she listens. It’s as though everything she does is timed to something other than the clock—something deeper, more natural. Something that doesn’t need to be counted.

The hours stretch, but I’m not counting them. I feel them instead. Each moment feels suspended, as if we’re not passing through time, but alongside it.

In her house, time is like kneaded dough—soft, pliable, unhurried. Not measured, but felt, like a melody you live within, unmarked by the ticking clock.

The question that has been sitting at the back of my mind—the one that has been building ever since I walked into her house—finally rises to the surface. And as it does, something deep inside me shifts.

When it’s time to leave, I stand by the door. I’ve said my goodbyes, but I don’t move right away. The sunlight spills through the window, casting shadows that seem to shift with the air. 

Outside, the world feels different. Sharper, clearer, but more transient than I remember. The wind slips through my hands. The leaves rustle. The hum of traffic is a distant murmur, but it’s not a sound I’m part of anymore. Time is slipping away, but I don't feel the urge to chase it.

I think back to the timer—the sand falling, unnoticed, like moments slipping through my fingers. What did I hold in my hands back then? Just glass. Just sand. Something weightless, yet heavy.

What is time, if not a thing to measure, to mark? But somehow, in her eyes, time doesn’t need an answer. It simply is.

As I walk to my car, I look back at the house one last time. I wonder if she’s sitting there, in the quiet, not marking time, but simply living in it.